There won’t be a new Battlefield until 2021 at the earliest

Wherever there’s a Call of Duty, there’s usually a Battlefield game around the corner that’s ready to ignite a thousand cheap debates over which game is the better wartime shooter. This year’s a bit different, as the annual military shooter pissing contest is one that Call of Duty Modern Warfare is going to win by default thanks to it being the only player in the field.

So what’s the dealio? Where’s Battlefield this year? I mean it has been an entire year since Battlefield 5 was released and if I know anything about video games it’s that they’re easy to make especially when you push the mkae game gud now button several times. Realistically, nobody was expecting another Battlefield game so soon, as the franchise normally pops up in two year increments. 2020 might sound like a solid year for a new entry in the franchise, but fans are going to have to wait a little bit longer if they want EA’s particular slice of action.

“Our Battlefield franchise and its community are also a major focus for us, and we’ll add new content and new ways to play Battlefield 5 in FY21,” EA CEO Andrew Wilson said in an investors call via PC Gamer, locking and loading his PR speak to deliver full metal jacket hype rounds that maximised terminal velocity buzzwords.

Targeting new innovation that will be enabled by next-gem platforms and a growing install base on the new consoles, our next Battlefield game is set for FY22.

According to Wilson, EA has two reasons for wanting to hold back Battlefield for another year: Reason one is that they’re looking to hop onto a new console generation with their next game and reason 2: Reason Harder is that Battlefield 5 is still making a silly amount of cash thanks to its live service nature and having an ally in the form of Apex Legends. “We still see a burgeoning opportunity with Battlefield 5, and as I talked about in the prepared remarks, we’re about to launch a whole new theater of war with the Pacific theater,” Wilson said.

And the team is still really thinking about to continue to drive that service on a go-forward basis. So we think there’s an opportunity still inside the Battlefield 5 experience, as it was built as a base live service from the beginning. I think people get used to the annual cadence of sports, which works really well in sports, but we want to be careful on some of these other franchises that we give them the long life that they deserve inside our business, and can generate great returns for us over a long period of time.

Long story short: No new Battlefield game until the next consoles are out, which EA totally aren’t losing sleep over thanks to Apex Legends and Battlefield 5 currently pumping more cash into their coffers while I stay up at night crying about how Titanfall deserved better. Which should give Internet trolls enough time to photoshop evidence about how every female soldier in recent war memory was in fact a dude in drag or several babies precariously balanced on each other’s shoulders and covered up by a trenchcoat.

Last Updated: October 30, 2019